10.12. Image Capture

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10.11. iDVD

You have iDVD only if you bought a new Mac containing a SuperDrive DVD burner , or you bought Apple's iLife software suite. iDVD lets you turn your digital photos or camcorder movies into DVDs that work on almost any DVD player, complete with menus , slideshow controls, and other navigation features. iDVD handles the technology; you control the style.

Sure, you can export your finished iMovie project back to a good old VHS cassette. But preserving your work on a DVD gives you a boatload of benefits, including better durability, dramatically better quality, no rewinding, duplication without quality loss, and cheaper shipping. (And besides, you can fit a lot more DVDs on a shelf than VHS tapes.)


Note: DVD players sold since 2002 are generally a safe bet for playing back homemade DVDs, but check the master player compatibility list at www.videohelp.com if you're in doubt. Some players are fussy about which DVD-R brand discs they play, too.

Here's the basic routine for converting an iMovie movie into a Blockbuster-style DVD. (The following pages describe iDVD 5, although other versions of iDVD are similar enough.)

10.11.1. Phase 1: Insert Chapter Markers

DVD chapters let viewers skip to predefined starting points within a movie, either using a Scene menu or pressing the Next Chapter or Previous Chapter buttons on the remote control. Thanks to the partnership of iMovie and iDVD, you can add markers that replicate this feature to your own movies.

  1. In iMovie, click the iDVD button to open the iDVD palette .

    You'll find it among the other palette buttons, just to the right of the Effects button, as shown in Figure 10-11.

  2. Move the Playhead to the position for your new chapter. Click Add Chapter. Type a chapter title into the Chapter Title box .

    Whatever you type here winds up as the chapter name in the finished DVD menu.

  3. Repeat step 2 until you've created all the chapters for your movie. Save your project .

    If you've added a chapter in error, select it and then click Remove Chapter.

10.11.2. Phase 2: Hand Off to iDVD

Now you're ready to hand off the movie to iDVD, where you design your menu and burn your DVD.

Figure 10-11. The iDVD palette lets you add, remove, and name chaptersand then publish your iMovies to iDVD. New iMovie
chapters are numbered sequentially, as they appear in your movie from beginning to end. Chapter references appear in your timeline as small yellow diamonds just above the video track. iMovie can add up to 99 chapters per movie with the iDVD palette.


Save your project, and then click Create iDVD Project at the bottom of the chapter list. Your hard drive whirs, thunder rolls somewhere, and after a few minutes, you wind up in iDVD itself. You'll know when you get there: Empty postcards scroll slowly from right to left, confirming your arrival in iDVD land. (That's the Travel 1 theme , described in a moment.)


Tip: To turn off the Apple logo that appears in the lower-right corner of every iDVD Project, choose iDVD Preferences, click General, and turn off "Show Apple logo watermark."

Figure 10-12. The Customize button reveals iDVD's Customize drawer . When you click one of the buttons at the top, the pane changes to show its contents. For example, Themes lets you choose a design scheme. The Settings pane lets you choose motion menu duration, background video and audio, title fonts, and the look and placement of buttons.
The Media pane lets you survey your Mac's lists of music (if it's kept in iTunes), photos (from iPhoto), and movies (what's in your Movies folder and any other folders you've added in the Preferences dialog box). Status lets you see how close you are to filling up your DVD.


Select a theme by clicking its thumbnail. The main menu screen takes on your chosen theme instantly. If your DVD menu system has other screensa scene-selection screen that lists your chapter markers, for examplechoose Advanced Apply Theme to Project, so that every screen looks alike.

10.11.4. Phase 4: Edit Titles and Buttons

On the main menu screen now before you, you'll find two buttons:

  • Play . On the finished DVD, this button means, "Play the movie from the beginning."

  • Scene Selection . On the finished DVD, this button takes your audience to a second screen, which is filled with individual buttons for the chapters you created. (This second screen may have arrows that lead to third and fourth screens, because iDVD can fit only six buttons per screen.)

You can edit these text buttons just as you would Finder icon names : Click inside the text to open up an editing box, type your changes, and then press Enter or Return.

Editing button names works almost the same way, except that you single-click the button first, and then click the text itself to open the editing box.

10.11.5. Phase 5: Burning Your DVD

Once your menu screens look pretty good, you're almost ready to burn the DVD. Before you use up a blank disc, however, you should test your creation to make sure that it works on the virtual DVD player known as the Macintosh.

  • Preview the DVD . iDVD's Preview button lets you test your menu system to avoid unpleasant surprises . When you click it, iDVD enters Preview mode, which simulates how your DVD works on a regular DVD player. You even get a simulated remote control to help you navigate. Click Stop (the filled square) or reclick Preview to return to iDVD's Edit mode.

  • Check the length . iDVD prefers to burn 60-minute DVDs, because they have the best quality. The instant you try to add the 61st minute of footage to your project, though, iDVD invites you to switch to 90-minute modeat lower qualityor to delete some video from the project to make it fit within 60 minutes again.

When you've finished editing your disc and testing it thoroughly, it's time to proceed with your burn.

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Drop Zones

Drop zones, available in most iDVD themes, let you use video clips, slideshows, and graphics as the backgrounds of your menu screens. Look for the words "Drag photos or movies here," indicating the presence of a drop zone.

You can drag any video, photo album, or image right into a drop zone outline to install it there (like the island photo shown here). You can drag it out of the Finder, or directly out of the Customize drawer. (Click Media, then choose Photos or Movies from the pop-up menu.)

By the way, if you drag a movie into a drop zone, you can't control where the movie begins, as you can with button movies. It always begins, well, at the beginning.


  1. Check your Motion setting .

    The Motion button at the bottom of the window determines whether or not your finished DVD will have animated menus, buttons, and backgrounds, and whether or not music will play. If the Motion button is green, you get all of the above. If you turn the Motion button off (gray), then motion and audio features won't appear on the final disc.

  2. Choose File Save. Click the Burn button twice .

    The first click on the gray, closed Burn button "opens" it, revealing a throbbing yellow-and-black button. The second click begins the burning process.

  3. Insert a blank DVD-R disc when the Mac asks for it .

    Be sure you're using the correct kind of blank DVD for the speed of your DVD burner. For example, don't attempt to burn 1x or 2x blanks at 4x speed.

    You can use DVD-RW (rewritable) discs, too, although they don't work in as many DVD players.


Tip: Depending on your Mac model, you may be able to use either blank DVD-R discs or blank DVD+R discs. (Yes, these are two different kindsnote the punctuation. They're essentially identical after burningbut some Macs can't burn DVD+R.) Your Mac may even be able to burn dual-layer DVDs (Section 11.1.1.3).To find out which kinds of discs your Mac can burn, open System Profiler (in your Applications Utilities folder). Expand the Hardware triangle, and click the Disc Burning category.At the right side of the display, you can see what kind of drive your Mac has: "CD-Write: -R, -RW (you can record CDs), for example.If it also says "DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW," then you can burn CDs and DVDsyou have a SuperDrive.

After a while, or a bit more than a while, a freshly burned DVD automatically ejects from your SuperDrive.

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Mac OS X. The Missing Manual
Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)
ISBN: 0596153287
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 506
Authors: David Pogue

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